Amnesty International says that atrocities and human rights violations committed during the conflict between the federal Ethiopian government and Tigrayan separatists amount to severe human rights violations and war crimes.
Fisseha Tekle, Amnesty International’s researcher for the region, blames the crimes on “all parties”, adding that there is “no innocent party which has not committed human rights violations”.
Extrajudicial killings and massacres by all sides have been documented throughout the conflict in northern Ethiopia, which will have continued for two years in November.
An initial report released last month by the United Nations international commission of human rights on Ethiopia, which was formed in December 2021 to investigate abuses during the war, concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that parties to the conflict had committed war crimes and human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and airstrikes on civilians.
The Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan forces are currently holding peace talks in Pretoria, South Africa, to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the conflict that has been ravaging northern Ethiopia for nearly two years.
Last week, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said the war would “end and peace will prevail.”
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front rebels, TPLF,and the federal army — backed by forces from neighboring Eritrea — have been fighting since November 2020 in a deadly conflict that has plunged northern Ethiopia into a serious humanitarian crisis.
The war has displaced more than two million Ethiopians and plunged hundreds of thousands into near-starvation conditions, according to the UN.
